#Salesforce DevOps

[amberwallace]

Salesforce DevOps Implementation | DevOps for Salesforce | Jade

Jade, a Salesforce Partner, offers Salesforce DevOps Implementation Services to drive business outcomes faster with transparency in the DevOps lifecycle. Contact us.

[amitandre]

Technologies improve the efficiency of systems, products, and services. Maintain data flow, track and streamline processes, and manage contacts and employee records with it. Increased operational efficiency allows the business to reduce costs and grow rapidly at the same time.

[techforce-services]

Top 5 Salesforce DevOps Best Practices for Successful Deployment

Introduction:

As organizations continue to evolve, the need for faster and more reliable deployments has become critical. In the world of Salesforce, where customization and development are at the heart of business operations, ensuring that updates and changes are efficiently managed is key to staying competitive. This is where Salesforce DevOps comes into play, providing a framework for better collaboration, automation, and continuous delivery.

By following best practices in Salesforce DevOps, companies can avoid common pitfalls and achieve smoother, more successful deployments. In this article, we will explore the top 5 Salesforce DevOps best practices that will help you optimize your deployment processes and ensure your Salesforce services run smoothly.

1. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)

What is CI/CD? CI/CD is at the core of any DevOps solution and involves automating the process of integrating code changes (Continuous Integration) and deploying those changes to production (Continuous Deployment). For Salesforce environments, this practice allows developers to merge code frequently, reducing the chances of conflicts and bugs down the line.

Why it Matters in Salesforce DevOps: In the Salesforce ecosystem, frequent code changes and updates can create challenges if not managed properly. CI/CD pipelines help ensure that every change is automatically tested and deployed, eliminating the manual processes that often delay releases. By setting up automated pipelines, you reduce the risk of errors and ensure that updates are delivered faster and more reliably.

Best Practice Tip: Use tools like Salesforce DX, Git, and Jenkins to set up an efficient CI/CD pipeline. Automate the testing and deployment process to minimize manual intervention and human error.

2. Version Control for Effective Change Management

What is Version Control? Version control allows developers to track changes to code, collaborate effectively, and maintain a history of modifications. For Salesforce DevOps, using a version control system (VCS) like Git is crucial for managing multiple teams working on the same Salesforce services simultaneously.

Why it Matters in Salesforce DevOps: Salesforce environments are often shared by multiple developers, admins, and teams, each contributing to different aspects of the platform. Without proper version control, changes can easily conflict with one another, leading to bugs or even system downtime. By implementing version control, you ensure that every change is tracked, making it easier to roll back if something goes wrong.

Best Practice Tip: Adopt a Git-based version control system and ensure all developers use it consistently. This will help track changes, avoid code conflicts, and maintain a clear history of updates.

3. Automated Testing for Quality Assurance

What is Automated Testing? Automated testing involves using scripts and testing frameworks to automatically validate that code behaves as expected. This is a crucial part of any DevOps solution and becomes even more important in a Salesforce environment where frequent updates and changes are common.

Why it Matters in Salesforce DevOps: Manual testing is time-consuming and error-prone. In Salesforce DevOps, automated testing ensures that every change made to your Salesforce services is tested immediately, reducing the chances of introducing bugs into the production environment. Automated tests help validate that new features work as intended and that existing functionality is not broken by the updates.

Best Practice Tip: Incorporate automated testing into your CI/CD pipeline. Use testing tools like Provar or Selenium to create comprehensive test suites that run automatically during every build and deployment process.

4. Monitoring and Feedback for Continuous Improvement

What is Monitoring and Feedback? Monitoring and feedback involve tracking the performance of your deployments and gathering input from users and systems to identify areas for improvement. In Salesforce DevOps, monitoring tools help you understand how deployments affect the performance and stability of your Salesforce services.

Why it Matters in Salesforce DevOps: Continuous monitoring ensures that any issues in your Salesforce environment are detected early, enabling faster resolution. Feedback loops between development, operations, and users allow teams to quickly address any shortcomings in their deployment processes or application performance. This leads to better outcomes and more reliable services.

Best Practice Tip: Use monitoring tools such as New Relic or Datadog to track the performance of your Salesforce environments. Set up alerts and dashboards to visualize key metrics and gather user feedback to continuously improve your DevOps process.

5. Governance and Security: Ensuring Compliance

What is Governance and Security? Governance refers to policies and procedures that ensure your Salesforce environment adheres to internal and external compliance standards. Security ensures that your Salesforce services are protected from vulnerabilities, especially when deploying changes through a DevOps solution.

Why it Matters in Salesforce DevOps: For industries like finance and healthcare, compliance with regulations (such as HIPAA or GDPR) is critical. Any changes made to your Salesforce environment must be compliant with these regulations to avoid penalties. Integrating governance and security checks into your DevOps pipeline ensures that every change is reviewed for compliance and security risks before being deployed.

Best Practice Tip: Implement governance and security checks into your DevOps pipeline by using tools like Copado or Gearset, which offer built-in compliance and security checks for Salesforce environments. Additionally, ensure that your development and operations teams are trained on security best practices.

Conclusion

Adopting Salesforce DevOps best practices is essential for ensuring successful deployments, faster time-to-market, and better collaboration across teams. From implementing CI/CD pipelines to incorporating automated testing, monitoring, and governance, these practices will help you optimize your Salesforce environment for speed, reliability, and security.

By following these top 5 Salesforce DevOps best practices, your organization can achieve smoother, more reliable deployments while enhancing the quality and performance of your Salesforce services.

[nidhisolunus]

Whether you want to disrupt your #healthcare #business or you want to automate your deployment tasks, #Salesforce DevOps is the answer! Discover how DevOps is transforming the healthcare sector through this infographic #Solunus https://www.solunus.com/post/5-benefits-of-adopting-salesforce-devops-for-healthcare-firms

[desssinc]

Salesforce DevOps Low Code Platform!

The most important factor in nearly every software project will be the accessibility of skilled developers. Compared to other roles within the corporate world, software developers are expensive and difficult to locate, and difficult to retain. Writing software takes patience, concentration, and a clear head. It also takes time to complete the learning process, knowledge of all the fundamental aspects of computer usage, and the money to pay for an online boot camp or degree program. It's also daunting for many as it demands confidence in our capacity to be a learner, something many people might lose if they didn't excel in university.

Low-code platforms lower the barriers to entry for people who wish to master the art of software development. It takes less focus to control objects on the screen than it does to store the invisibility of software within our working memory. This allows those who aren't comfortable in coding to get jobs in which they'll earn greater pay. This creates a larger workforce potential for companies. Everyone benefits.

Another important aspect of the effectiveness of low-code is the reduced complexity. The greater the number of options a system can offer the more flexible it can be. The more options a system offers, the more wisdom is required to pick the most appropriate choice. This can create great tension. Custom-coded software can be made infinitely flexible. However, the cost of this freedom is the level of intelligence to operate it.

It's difficult to create the software completely from scratch. It's even more difficult to keep it running. As software systems increase in both complexity and size, they require not just an individual who's comfortable with their language of writing, but a familiarity with the specific systems created for the particular project. Low-code systems build layers of abstraction that conceal the complex.

In addition, dealing with the complexity of unnecessary tasks is yet another undifferentiated piece of work for companies. While developers may be proud of the ability to design an item from scratch, if that element is offered as a pre-built version using a low-code platform there's no benefit in creating the component from scratch. Developers who utilize low-code tools can address greater challenges, and help propel the business forward instead of reinventing the wheel.

Applications that are sophisticated and operate outside of the realm of the IT enterprise were once thought of as "shadow IT." But digital natives are now a part of all departments of every organization and low-code solutions give them the capability to build robust and flexible software to meet their requirements without waiting in line to get support from an already overloaded IT team.

Low-code development was born of necessity. One solution has been to look to non-developers and provide them with low-code tools to create applications independently. Salesforce and other low-code platforms made it possible to create business applications without years of coding experience. This not only reduces developer workload but also brings users with business knowledge into the development process earlier.

The low-code Salesforce development has been a huge help in serving organizations bridge the developer skills gap, however, to maximize the value and benefits of Salesforce apps, you require thorough testing coverage. If you don't have proper testing in place the defects can be introduced into production, which makes them more complex and costly to correct. Developers who are low-code spend ever-increasing amounts of time fixing issues and spend less than they do in coming up with new capabilities.

While testing was once thought to be the domain of professionals and testers, tools that are low-coded are also able to fill the gap in testing skills.

How do you define Low-Code Salesforce?

The Salesforce platform integrates business and technology together. It is no longer just a customer relationship management platform, it allows organizations to track the progress of their business, make informed decisions, and forecast the best results. However, to make maximum benefit from the platform, companies have to be able to convert their business needs into features for applications and software. But the skill gap means that companies are unable to meet their customers' needs.

The most effective solution is to cut out the middleman in development. Low-code platforms with simple interfaces with easy-to-use features draw more people to the development of features.

Low-code Salesforce lets users take on various tasks that were previously only available to developers with experience. The most popular options are:

Process automation!

Users can use the software for designing and automating Salesforce processes that are based on their company's requirements and workflows.

App development!

The platform allows businesses to develop mobile applications that offer customized user experiences.

Embedded workflows!

Customers can create automated customer interaction that can be integrated into mobile devices and websites, online communities, and everywhere else.

Analysis of data!

Salesforce lets users connect other data sources to provide an extensive view of all data for an enterprise.

Although these tools have proven fantastic for connecting business experts closer to technology, they also have some drawbacks. Businesses should be aware of the common issues in low-code Salesforce and address them promptly.

A Different Perspective and More Enjoyable Experience for Developers!

To begin, Salesforce requires a completely different mentality than traditional development. You should forget recursive loops and string algorithms. Salesforce is all about business expertise. You're working with software instead of developing it. It's still important to comprehend the logic behind it, and how to code, but it's about being aware of the capabilities readily available from the start.

As a Salesforce developer, you're in a special position of being both technology and business. This allows you to develop technical and soft capabilities. Additionally, since Salesforce has been built with best practices, it allows you to study the business process and ideas. By adjusting the features available within Salesforce to fit the requirements of your company and requirements, you'll be able to deliver greater value and speedier as opposed to building from the ground up.

Teams Can Develop Faster And More Efficiently!

The Salesforce low-code platform makes it easy for developers to use. It has predefined standards that will help you plan your implementations, and support the entire application development lifecycle including CI/CD and DevOps. Plus APIs allow for easy integration with project management software.

Low-code platforms are faster and more convenient than traditional programming. It also offers opportunities for non-developers who want to be involved. However, it is important to retain good developers. Only an experienced professional can tell you when to use standard capabilities and when to use custom code.

To prevent people from making a mess, you need to have a plan for who can make the different types of changes. Before you can start using low-code platforms, it is important to learn how to code and understand the processes.

Automate Workflows With Low-Code Features!

Salesforce offers many functionalities that reduce the need to code. Lightning flows, for example, allow simple automation and front-end layouts out of the box. They're modular and easy to set up.

You can also use automated workflows to do more specific tasks, such as:

•     Sales Cloud's sales process orchestration tool for the opportunity and lead management. •     Service Cloud has case routing functionality that assigns cases to the appropriate person based on their skills, availability, workload, and other factors.

These capabilities would require a lot of time and effort.

Salesforce says that the new low-code product will make change-and-release management easier for developers planning and writing applications on its platform.

What Are The Benefits Of Low-Code Development?

Low-code platforms offer more customization and control than no-code platforms. Low-code platforms can be used by non-developers and business analysts who are looking to automate processes. They also appeal to tech-savvy users without formal programming knowledge. These platforms are great for learning the basics and allowing you to manipulate the code via GUI manipulation. You can learn more about the platform and its programming language and you will be able to do manual code editing to create custom applications. The low-code platform is essentially a training wheel that allows you to create code independently while still having access to a GUI for assistance when needed.

Learning to teach non-developers how to write code could assist in addressing the DevOps shortage of talent that many companies are experiencing. Developers from the community can utilize low-code software to develop basic functions to support specific tasks within their departments, removing some of the pressure on the development team. They can then develop more complex applications. Certain low-code development platforms have API libraries and extensions which allow you to incorporate additional capabilities without writing manually. This means that you won't need to hire skilled development expertise to add a specific feature to your program which will save you money while making your software go on the market quicker.

Furthermore, platforms that use low-code enable people with brilliant ideas to join in on projects that are created with the help of platforms that use low code. Attention to technical details could hinder developers to look at the bigger picture or envision what a client might do with their software. Low-code platforms allow non-coders to have the possibility of creating prototypes of the basic functions and features that they can show to the team of developers which allows for better DevOps collaboration and creativity, as well as increasing their quality final product. Click here to Contact us.

[braydendiegoven]

Are you analyzing your practices and looking for improvements? Here are 6 areas of DevOps for Salesforce that you can assess.

[cloudfulcrum]

4 Ways DevOps Can ‘Supercharge’ Your Organization

Being competitive in the contemporary financial services environment requires organizations to deliver products and services at speed and scale. This has been the focal point of several digital transformation initiatives, which have only expedited over the last few years as the demand for enhanced digital capabilities has risen tremendously. As cloud adoption is embraced across financial services and other industries, effective delivery is increasingly gauged by frequency, i.e., how often new features, upgrades, changes, and completely new services are delivered.

This pressing demand for the Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) of services is propelling the adoption of DevOps tools and practices, as well as agile methodologies. But rather than adopt a bit-by-bit DevOps approach across teams or lines of business, organizations should adopt or build DevOps platforms to swiftly gain a strategic and competitive advantage over their less agile competitors.

How DevOps Supercharges Your Organization

1. Creates ‘Value’ Via Increase in Execution Speed

Ever since the emergence of DevOps, several organizations have made rapid and great strides, improving their development processes. However, for Salesforce DevOps to continue revolutionizing organizations, it must constantly grow to address chronic challenges, leverage new opportunities, and expand beyond its comfort zone. From expansion issues and change management impediments, to poor visibility between development and operations teams, and the hardship of managing the rising complexity of the cloud and microservices world, state-of-the-art technologies and innovative ways of thinking are required to elevate DevOps to the next level.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and its repercussions were the ubiquitous and high-priority topic in corporate boardrooms. This year, as we progress towards the ‘new normal,’ two new big focus areas are emerging: ‘digital transformation’ and a strong ‘focus on sustainability.’

According to Gartner 1, “By 2023, 70% of organizations will use value stream management to boost flow in the DevOps pipeline, leading to swifter delivery of customer value.” In a Business Value Stream, value is gauged against business results that deliver growth, revenue, competitive differentiation and market share, whereas in a DevOps Value Stream, value is assessed vis-à-vis outputs including improved execution, better cost, speed of execution, and the volume of software delivered. The Digital.ai Enterprise Value Stream platform blends the benefits of both. It is a next-gen platform to skillfully manage the delivery of software-driven business value. The platform offers prescriptive AI-powered analytics solutions to aid organizations to identify and diagnose problems that minimize software delivery reliability and efficiency across the SDLC, make informed decisions to reduce business impacts, which in the long-term can increase revenues and contribute to the organization’s growth.

Integrated enterprise agile planning, DevOps, application protection, and testing solutions constitute an end-to-end version platform, facilitating seamless execution and delivery. AI-powered Insights regulate software planning with business requirements, process optimization, and software delivery to boost business and customer value.

2. Departs From Legacy

In today’s world of agility, where technology has conquered time, customers are averse to embracing long lead times for latest features or upgrades to core functions, such as reliability and security, which are generally delivered through product releases from time to time. This has become an obsolete and thwarting method of delivery, for both customers and developers.

DevOps and agile offers a solution to this, which allows products to be fragmented into smaller value streams, or microservices, which can be delivered and iterated on a constant basis.

Fundamentally, DevOps is a method of liberating developers to enable them to focus on what they do best by automating processes that are crucial but laborious. While customized DevOps tools and practices exist for every part of the application development lifecycle, platforms are a more efficient method of scaling this across an organization.

3. Liberates Developers With a Platform

According to Gartner, the benefits of a platform are immense and it forecast that 90% of organizations will fail to scale-up their DevOps initiatives if they fail to build a shared self-service platform. The reason for this is that DevOps is expensive to implement bit-by-bit, as customized tooling, technology and talent are required for different services, which naturally increase technology ownership and overheads.

Ensuring that the appropriate tools, technology and quality checks are in place for each application is a laborious task requiring intervention and control from domain experts throughout the application development lifecycle.

By following the prescribed processes built into a DevOps platform, developers are liberated to focus more on ideation and innovation, which is the quintessence of enterprise. Minimizing the mental load on developers enables them to experiment and try out new features, while giving themselves the leeway to fail. True to CI/CD, they can fail fast and iterate accordingly with the subsequent release, implementing their learnings into their prospective sprint.

4. Enhances Developer Experience

DevOps enhances delivery, but an agile framework for organizing features is also necessary. The rising focus on microservices is propelling the need for a more targeted approach to delivering software. Ensuring team structure reflects this is as significant as embracing the technologies that enable services to be delivered in this manner.

DevOps is cross-functional by default. It facilitates automation of processes that would otherwise lead to hand-offs and enhance work in progress. Agile is a means of getting rid of hand-offs by coordinating teams together and providing them collective ownership of the complete application development lifecycle. Under an agile model, monitoring, security, QA, testing, and performance are the shared responsibility of the agile service team, a DevOps platform offers a recommended method of taking care of them, which enhances the developer experience and boosts the speed with which new features and services can be delivered.

When aligned with a DevOps platform, agile provides the uninterrupted feedback required for powerful and frequent delivery, which is being fast embraced as the new ideal model for software delivery. Organizations that are yet to commence their DevOps journey should implement a platform model to refrain from becoming one of the 90% of organizations Gartner predicts will fail to scale their DevOps initiatives. They should also proceed further and implement agile as their version plan to optimize the potential agility dividends.

About CloudFulcrum

CloudFulcrum with its mission of “DevOps as a Service” has been part of multiple successful Copado implementations across the globe with customers in BFSI, Health Care, Retail, Real Estate, and Technology verticals.

With our DevOps consulting, we help enterprises align their Digital Transformation goals to achieve higher efficiency, faster time-to-market, and better quality of software builds with early identification of arising issues, enabling continuous release of Salesforce applications.

[techforces]

To help your business reap maximum benefits from DevOps, we take advantage of the AutoRABIT end-to-end Continuous Delivery suite, which blends the best of Continuous Integration and Application Lifecycle Management features, allowing us to optimize your deployment by testing changes before you commit to them, and rollback with ease, whenever required.

1. Unlock the full potential of DevOps through a cultural change 2. Deliver applications and services with greater speed and reliability 3. Deliver continuous value to your business by focusing on agility and the power of data 4. Reap the full benefits of DevOps through AutoRABIT end-to-end Continuous Delivery suite 5. Migrate data selectively just with the ease of a few simple clicks 6. Preserve hierarchies and have unlimited data volume 7. Deploy only your most recent changes and launch parallel builds without governor limits.

[nidhisolunus]

Check out this interesting post to know about 5 aspects you must consider to choose the right tools for your #Salesforce #DevOps project. #Solunus

[nidhisolunus]

Here’s an insightful post on commonly-faced issues in implementing Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) in a Salesforce DevOps project and how to resolve them.

[nidhisolunus]

Here’s an insightful post on commonly-faced issues in implementing Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) in a Salesforce DevOps project and how to resolve them.

[nidhisolunus]

Check out this interesting post to know about 5 aspects you must consider to choose the right tools for your #Salesforce #DevOps project. #Solunus

[nidhisolunus]

5 Best Practices to Implement a Robust Salesforce Deployment Process

We all know Salesforce facilitates continuous innovation at scale, allowing companies to fulfill their rapidly-evolving requirements with high levels of efficacy and achieve excellent growth. The needs of a fast-growing organization are highly dynamic, and this calls for the capability to add new features to its Salesforce system quickly, with minimal interruption to its operations.  

Most firms are leveraging DevOps, a paradigm that enables hassle-free collaboration between various teams viz. development, operations, quality assurance and information safety to enhance the abilities of their Salesforce org with little disruption to the functioning of their business. DevOps utilizes automation to shorten development lifecycles in a big way, allowing companies to deal with fast-changing needs efficaciously.  

One of the key elements of Salesforce DevOps is Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery/Deployment (CD). CI is a DevOps process that enables Continuous Deployment (CD); it allows smooth integration of code from different development teams automatically, thereby facilitating a complete release of software. A Salesforce CI involves the following steps.

·       Importing revised code into the systems of the development team

·       Developing new capabilities of the Salesforce org

·       Committing the modifications to a centralized repository

·       Enabling smooth recompiling when a new code commit takes place

·       Performing unit and integration tests on recompiled code

·       Informing the results of the tests to the team, so that they can act and fix defects quickly

Once CI is completed, the DevOps initiative reaches the Continuous Delivery/Continuous Deployment phase. The two procedures are very similar and differ only in one aspect. Here’re the steps that are common to both Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment.

·       Verifying the status of the build and resolving issues (if any) before submitting a new piece of code

·       Submitting modifications to the repository in a systematic fashion

·       Reverifying the build status; if it’s successful, rebasing work systems for configuration

·       Testing the build to make sure all newly-added functions work as desired

·       Checking in the newly-developed code upon successful completion of build testing

·       Finishing CI with the new changes

From this point, Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment diverge. In case of the former, deployment of the newly-created features is done manually after getting an approval from the concerned stakeholders. However, in Continuous Deployment, the enhancement release process is fully automated.

Having seen how a Salesforce CI/CD process looks like, let’s now move on to examine 5 best practices to facilitate effective implementation of the process.

5 Proven Practices to Successfully Execute Salesforce CI/CD

1.       Develop a Solid Plan

You must come up with a good plan for your Salesforce CI/CD initiative based on the goals you wish to achieve. The plan must enable your team to gather requirements seamlessly and utilize them to add new features and develop user stories that can be presented for getting approval from stakeholders. Remember DevOps is all about releasing software in iterations, and ensuring proper collaboration will go a long way in enabling releases without time and cost overruns.

2.       Formulate an Effective Environment Strategy

Make sure the creation of your user stories and new features is guided by an effective environment strategy. You must clearly specify the data needs for each stage of the development process, indicate the tasks performed by each member of your team and define access controls for the environments. The environment strategy must be based on your data usage policies and fully adhere to applicable regulatory norms.  

3.       Set Up Clear Processes to Avoid Confusion

Each developer has his own way of working; when each member of the development team works on his own tasks without proper communication and access to documentation, there is bound to be confusion. So, it is necessary to define parameters that people in your team have to follow throughout the development process in an unambiguous manner. This will help prevent issues, thereby facilitating hassle-free enhancement of your Salesforce org.

4.       Facilitate Continuous Testing of High Efficacy

You need to test customized code continuously to make sure it functions as desired. You can complement your manual testing efforts with automated tests to thoroughly verify Salesforce deployments. Many companies use popular testing tools such as Selenium to execute automated tests. However, these tools can be utilized effectively only by skilled developers who are adept at programming, and this can create problems for users with little coding ability. You can overcome this challenge by using low-code tools that allow non-technical users to test the enhancements to your org without hassles.

5.       Use a Good Version Controlling System

Using a robust version controlling system plays a critical role in the success of your company’s CI/CD initiative. It allows you to track and manage modifications to code quickly, with minimal effort, thereby allowing you identify issues and eliminate bugs effectively. You can also use the version controlling system to map the value stream to minimize wastage and improve efficiency.  

I’d like to conclude by saying proper execution of the CI/CD initiative will allow you to complete your Salesforce DevOps project successfully. The five best practices listed above will go a long way in enabling you to implement the initiative effectively.

Hope you liked this post. How do you use DevOps to enhance your Salesforce org? We’d love to know.  

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